


Coda

by bluestalking



Category: Two Noble Kinsmen
Genre: F/M, M/M, Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-18
Updated: 2011-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 13:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestalking/pseuds/bluestalking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"--would you<br/>Deny a ghost the satisfying end<br/>Of all the troubles that would drag him back,<br/>The ghost of one you often said you loved?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coda

**THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN  
CODA**

_PALAMON sleeps in a chamber alone. He sits up suddenly and sees the ghost of ARCITE standing before him._

PALAMON  
Cousin Arcite, thought I you were dead!

ARCITE  
Aye, and that I was, and am, but now  
I come to see ye nonetheless—would you  
Deny a ghost the satisfying end  
Of all the troubles that would drag him back,  
The ghost of one you often said you loved?

PALAMON  
I could not deny it if I would.

ARCITE  
Your bed is unadorned, my noble coz,  
And after all the blood that spilled to fill’t!  
Pray tell me, Palamon, how it can be,  
That now at last I find no Emily  
At rest where I expected her fair form,  
In marriage-bed so long contested and  
For whom you find me here, not home on earth,  
But with a foot out o’th’ well-earned grave.

PALAMON  
Cousin, Emilia my sweet fair love  
And yours--is now my wedded wife, as you  
Have guessed—and now you wonder how it comes,  
That having her I sleep apart and lone.  
The truth, Arcite, is wicked cold and not  
An answer which I offer with the warmth  
Of comforting your fears or staunching rage  
I know your blood would feel did it yet flow.  
I lie apart and wrecked in truth because  
My sleep is haunted by a thousand foes,  
All banishable by a single thought  
But one—who, greater than all others, ever grows  
A shadow and a haunt in sleeping mind.

ARCITE  
What, Palamon!

PALAMON  
I speak of one great foe  
Whom I did love as life itself and kill,  
Did drag into th’ignoble depths of foul  
Jealousy and murder without thought.  
Had I known, Arcite, what I did, or how  
I bent my spirit low to stifle yours—  
Had I then weighed on scales to measure worth,  
Not worth entire, but my own augmented—  
O, then, Arcite, such brutal deeds would I  
Have quick been to endure than to bestow.  
For thy face haunts me night by night, sweet coz,  
And tells me of my doom, self-figured and  
Too well-deserved to earn more tears than cries.  
I weep now, cousin, for I see by night  
That which broadest day and freedom hid—  
The love of brothers battled shield to shield,  
Of kin closer by heart and thought than blood,  
Of two friends who ought not have been apart—  
And now are cast two ways by foolish strife,  
Forever split, by stubborn lusty malice  
That rear’d its head one moment, and brought both  
Down to their knees and cast all honour off.

ARCITE  
It is my face you see, I comprehend.

PALAMON  
Aye, your face, and all that’s left behind—  
Warm memory turned ash by later deeds,  
Deeds fouler, self-indulg’d and poorly done.  
Alas, be no remorse nor no pleading prayers  
That may provoke a satisfying turn,  
And resurrect my much-beloved coz  
With all the sense that threw him off forthwith.

ARCITE  
Even in our strife I loved you well  
And left you with kind thought, honestly bless’d.  
I could not hate you, Palamon, and yet  
It was my greatest wound, not that you should  
Find love where I sought too and lost;  
I rather guided both my sword and words  
T’redress a hurt you did not see: that you  
Grant love elsewhere at the cost of mine.

PALAMON  
Gentle cousin, please expunge these words,  
The wound of which shall surely kill me else!  
I know already that I killed good love  
For love. Tell me not worse, that I have slain  
Where I was most affected and embraced—  
By steady loyalty that brooked no loss  
Without it hid disguised in trappings of  
A love to mirror mine—where ‘twas,  
Rather than where’t should have been.

ARCITE  
My Palamon, I do not seek to hurt  
No more in death than ever did in life.  
No foul hell-shade am I, to shadow nights  
Already spent enshrouded in the torments  
Of a brain unquieted by deeds past cure.

PALAMON  
Why then do you appear to me this way?  
If not to height’n suff’ring or to bring  
An end to that which wracks my every sleep,  
Why do you come, Arcite, and bring to eye  
What mem’ry paints already in a pain’d  
And e’er self-loathing light?

ARCITE  
Ghosts, like gods, are slave to none but to  
Their own strongest desires; so I come  
Because I can not chuse to stay the coming.

PALAMON  
Speak plainly coz; the crypt has made you cryptic.

ARCITE  
In death my spirit yearns for one thing most,  
And being spirit’d won’t deny the urge.  
Here I stand, or seem, my cousin, here,  
And not th’bed where Emily lie in peace.  
For ‘tis not Emilia I desired,  
And is not my desire when all else  
But one bright coal of human passion  
Glows and flares when ev’ry other’s turn’d  
To ashy dust. O Palamon, you must  
Comprehend my meaning—but I’ll be  
Explic’t as the sun at noon is high—

PALAMON  
O, do not! I’d rather think a lie  
Of all you say this night, than that  
I had brought Arcite to his fall, and he  
The one that loved me best though I served worst.

ARCITE  
An honest man cannot a lying spirit make,  
For spirits are but memories impress’d  
Upon the living world, unaltering  
From that which dying they most truly were.  
Know you well I died in love with not  
A vengeful thought or last love-staining curse.  
I can no more lie comforts than lie comfortably  
Within my grave.

PALAMON  
O heart! That thought us free,  
You to death and I in justice wed—  
How now dos’t perceive the world, that seeks  
To rattle all your basest sureties, and leave but  
The surety that all was done sore ill,  
And all the best worth having and would have  
Best have enjoyed the vict’ry now is lost,  
And lost before me, caged unchanging in  
The moments of my failure as a man—  
Endless unrequited, he would see—  
When truth, a fickle thing, had in truth hid  
But shortly--now comes readily in sleep,  
The virtue of it bitter on the tongue  
And agonizing ev’ry beat o’th’ blood.  
Arcite, can ye not change if I do tell  
A diff’rent outcome than the one imprinted  
In your insubstantial shape?

ARCITE  
My coz,  
I, new a spirit, cannot tell the laws  
That govern all my kind—I bid ye try  
Your truth, if think ye any change it may  
Affect is more a blessing than a curse.

PALAMON  
Were it a curse I could not stay it now;  
Too many nights my sleep awak’d from fits  
Of guilty sorrow and of truth unbidden.  
Too far have I cast Emily from husband’s bed  
In dreaming of a field I never ought have left--  
Nay, to have contested. Arcite, I  
Have risked all on a lusty caper, and  
Though I deemed it worth the price, have lost  
That which made me whole, which gave all those  
Past capers worth, and battles valour. I  
Appear before you here in state undress’d  
In body, but in soul by equal measure.  
There be no grace I can demand of ye,  
Little more in life than now in death,  
But know ye Arcite, know it plain and always,  
Ye were my prize, and as you said it once,  
My heir and brother, and my good as wife.  
That which I have lost, I have cast down,  
And myself with it, for ‘twas all, ‘twas best.

ARCITE  
Wretched Palamon, fair star which I  
Cannot but follow now, the stays of that  
Which was my heart are loosed and I can breathe,  
An air of sorrow but relief as well—  
Forgive that, kindly, for a ghost is naught  
But selfish, and cannot help its love  
Although it be as pain to th’beloved  
And confess’d.

PALAMON  
Arcite, I would walk through  
The door which parts us—nay, I would fair fly,  
Out through the window yonder to come nearer.

ARCITE  
A fall, dear Palamon, is how the road to hell  
Is often call’d; you must not rob a life  
So precious to the living and to me  
Of its full course, of the virtue which  
It’s spent but partly yet, and must  
Still carry to its proper end. Hold, coz.

PALAMON  
I cannot.

ARCITE  
But you must.

PALAMON  
I would not.

ARCITE  
Coz, you speak in passion; think of what  
You leave for Emily if you quit her now.  
She is the fruit of all the labour late,  
Which brought me here and you to where you lie—  
Or me to where I lie and you to here—  
You must not spend in haste that which the gods  
Themselves have answered as the course that’s set.

PALAMON  
You seek to anger me, that much is clear.

ARCITE  
I have not the faculty for such  
A purpose as your anger, nor the will.  
Only as you love me live, and dying  
True and in good time perhaps be found  
Together in the fields where virtue brings  
Her honest and her honourable dead.

PALAMON  
You come and speak, and ask me then to hold  
All proceeds of confession for th’end of life  
Which may yet hold me ten years or near half  
A century unwelcome and unfriended?  
What cruel reply is this, on ripping my  
Guard from me on the promise of compassion?

ARCITE  
You are not unfriended—call to mind  
Who is your faithful and your wedded, and  
Your prize in all this fight—So too you hers!  
Emilia your company will keep,  
And if you’re the less burthened of your guilt,  
Then both ye shall the better prove as friends.  
I wish to free you, coz, not to clasp anew  
The shackles that I once undid with file  
And imprudent desire, to aid the one I loved  
In all his most intemp’rate schemes.

PALAMON  
Ye wound me, Arcite, though it be but with  
The gentleness I knew of you in life.  
So great a soldier yet so kind a man. . .

ARCITE  
If ye wish to wound me less, then live,  
And live well, with all liveliness and mirth  
Befitting that what’s good—and chearfulness  
To face all struggles and survive their end.  
Do me service, coz, and live the noble man  
Y’are and ever were. You shall not see  
Me, though I watch from far Elysium.  
Live free, though you remember, Palamon,  
And ye shall die a death that in short time—  
For centuries are short, i’th’ span of all—  
Shall bring ye to me at the mortal’s end.  
Then will we have no more regret nor sorrow  
And no sword may swing, be it visible or not,  
That’ll crack the love of Palamon and Arcite  
Which once stood strong, although unspoke, and may  
Now hold through all the giddy knots of time.

PALAMON  
This I’ll do, and banish suff’ring thoughts  
Because you’ve asked it, though my heart is fain  
To know how first I’ll smile in your wake.

ARCITE  
My wake, coz, is long past, and waking now  
Is province only of the vital sun.  
Sleep now and well and see ye what I mean  
When day breaks and ye find you’re once more whole.

PALAMON  
I shall give no farewell.

ARCITE  
I ask it not.

PALAMON  
But I hold to your promise you will watch.

ARCITE  
Until the dying day, my coz, I’ll see  
With all th’tender attentions of my state.

PALAMON  
I sleep, Arcite.

ARCITE  
And sleep well, gentle coz.

_PALAMON lies down and returns to sleep as ARCITE watches._

_Exit ARCITE._

_Finis._


End file.
